However, it looks like Skyrim and Fallout 4 will be tiny in comparison to Bethesda’s new IP. Starfield will have a game that is twice the size of the largest games to ever come out of Bethesda Studios. According to the game’s composer Inon Zur, Starfield is “at least twice as big as the biggest game” from the studio. It is not that hard to imagine that the game would be very large, as it has one hundred star systems and one thousand planets that players can explore. For fans of Bethesda, the allure of games like Skyrim and Fallout 4 come from the things you can encounter when exploring the vast wilderness. How much exploration can be done in Starfield is yet to be known.
Open world maps
The eleven-year-old Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim is still one of the biggest open-world games ever. The size of the map is around 15 square miles and most of it can be explored by players. Skyrim is beloved by fans not just because of the sheer size of the map but because of how much you can see and explore. Random events also seem to pop up everywhere to keep players occupied. As for Fallout 4, there is still an ongoing debate as to how large the map is. It does seem as large as Skyrim and feels more populated, incorporating real-life locations around the Boston area. Starfield will have a lot more area to explore as it has planets. The big question is how much of the planet can be explored. We have seen previews of unique locations within Starfield and they are well designed and feel alive. What we have yet to find out is how many of these unique locations are out there in the entire game.
Comparison to No Man’s Sky
Ever since Starfield was announced, it has always been compared to No Man’s Sky in terms of size and content. Both have procedurally generated planets and assets to make them feel more or less alive. Starfield has one thousand planets scattered around a collection of one hundred stars that players can visit. Bethesda’s approach to procedural generation is different from Hello Games’ implementation in No Man’s Sky. It is reported that while there is an algorithm to populate planets in Starfield with creatures and landscapes, the developers still had to finely tune each one to make them feel unique and alive. Where the two games vastly differ is the story. No Man’s Sky sandbox adventure has several short questline to explain the lore of the game and introduce the main mechanics. Starfield is more of a story-driven RPG which is typical of Bethesda titles. The story is set two decades after two major factions in the universe have ended a war and the player joins the last remaining group of space explorers. Fans have already commented that Starfield feels like Skyrim in space. As we know, Skyrim has a well-crafted story to match its beautiful setting. Inon Zur also mentioned that Starfield is a “deep and philosophical game that will consume a lot of your existence.” He also notes that the game is centered around the story and how players write their own stories within its narrative. Does size matter? We’ll know soon enough. Starfield was originally slated to come out this November before Bethesda delayed it to next year. Starfield’s initial footage didn’t impress those who were expecting a bit more. Hopefully, subsequent showings in the lead-up to the game’s release will do better at hyping things up for what’s believed to be the only game standing in between Bethesda and The Elder Scrolls 6.
